


in another life (i would make you stay)

by mackdizzy



Category: Devilman (Anime & Manga), MOSTLY Crybaby verse but im already throwing in other shit, we'll see where it goes!
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Animal Death, Blood, Cocaine, Dreams and Nightmares, Drugs, Drunkenness, Fix-It, M/M, Monster death ?, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Reincarnation, Sleepwalking, Sort of? - Freeform, Spoilers, like we are spoiling EVERYTHING here, sleep....murdering?, sleep....trances?, sort..of?, spoilers for the whole show, though the drugs have not been USED yet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27704960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mackdizzy/pseuds/mackdizzy
Summary: Ryo Asuka is a perfectly normal, perfectly human, perfectly in love 20 year old, and he's perfectly happy to stay that way forever, /thank you very much./Then the nightmares start. Then the nightmares get worse.[it's a reincarnation AU, let's get this day our daily bread.]
Relationships: Asuka Ryo | Satan/Fudo Akira
Comments: 12
Kudos: 45





	1. ryo asuka: troubled

**Author's Note:**

> gravity falls fans, boy oh BOY am i sorry. that party chapter is gonna be the next thing i write, i do promise. 
> 
> i finished this show yesterday, and it is all-consuming. it simply will not let me go. RYO simply will not let me go. as im not super versed in the fandom, the AUs, the dynamics, or the popular fic mechanics yet, i pulled this idea out of my ass. reincarnation AU is delightfully cliche, right?
> 
> chose not to apply archive warnings as i DO NOT KNOW entirely where this is going. i have a storyboard but have not yet decided on an ending. it may contain major character death or graphic violence. the other two won't be present. 
> 
> this story takes place in 2039, but apart from a few very minor things, i have not made many changes to the world as we know it or invented many "future civilization" concepts. it's basically....2020 with another label. sorry.
> 
> CURRENT TW’S: non-domestic animal abuse/murder (very brief, nondescript), alcohol, party drugs, altered states (drunk/high), absent parents/orphaning, nightmares, trance-states/sleepwalking (sleep murdering?)
> 
> [will contain canon-compliant themes of violence, substance, sex, and religion]  
> [contains major end-of-series spoilers]
> 
> [title inspired from me being a haikyuu fan, and also katy perry's the one that got away]

There is something indescribably familiar about the boy who asks Ryo Asuka  _ are you okay?  _ On the eve of June 11th, 2024. 

Ryo is five years old, and it is raining. This he knows. Ryo lives in the penthouse of a high-rise with his caretaker Jenny, because his father is a professor and his mother is an American movie star; because he inherited her blonde hair and rounded blue eyes and pronounced, angular face, he does not fit in, and he is an incredibly lonely child. He is five years old and it is raining, and there is a boy holding his umbrella out over his head.

“I’m Akira.” He says.

“Why are you crying?”

“I dunno.” He sniffles, wiping his nose. It doesn’t do much; with his umbrella over Ryo, there’s rain mingling with the tears on his face. “‘Cause you’re all wet?”

“Where’s your parents?”

“Don’t have any.” Akira shuffles his feet back and forth on the grass below. “Never had any. I’m an orphan. I live at the childcare institution, but I’m gonna go to Nakado Academy next year.”

“Me too!” This is exciting. A boy to go to school with means maybe, just maybe, a  _ friend.  _ A friend is a prospect that excites Ryo. 

“Where’s your parents, then?” Akira pouts.

“Away. They’re always away.” Ryo mumbles, sticking his hands in his pockets. He likes them in there; like little hidey holes, they make him feel comfortable. “In America, probably.”

“ _ America?” _

“Yeah, Mom’s in America. She’s a movie star.”

“A  _ movie star?” _

“Yeah.”

A silence settles over the two of them; it’s not an awkward, stifled silence. It’s a comfortable one. Ryo takes the umbrella from Akira’s grasp, but he moves closer to him, anyway. “We can share.” He nods. “That way, you won’t get wet either.”

-

On the first day of kindergarten, Ryo finds his new friend right away. “Hi!” Akira chirps, his eyes widening. “Er…”

“Ryo.” The six year old responds, fully aware he didn’t give his name out a year ago. Still, Akira remembered who he was; that’s important, right? He takes the seat next to him, crossing his legs under the table. He kicks the back of Akira’s shin impertinently, and Akira giggles.

“I think we’re gonna be friends.”

And friends they were. Lunch periods turned into forced classes together turned into almost every day spent together in his penthouse. By high school, Akira came straight to his apartment after school every day unless he had track practice, which Ryo frequently came to anyway so he wouldn’t have to walk back alone. Ryo hit 1 billion subscribers when he was 16 years old, making history as the first educational youtube channel to do so. Ryo couldn’t even comprehend 1 billion people. All he knew was they were his audience, and they liked him--they didn’t like him as much as Akira did, though, who frequently guest starred in his videos, the ones where they did dumb things like eat pudding blindfolded and guess the lines in bad science movies. Those are his favorite kinds of videos to make. He likes Akira more than anyone, he thinks.

Akira moves out of the childcare institution as soon as he is eighteen years old, and in with Ryo. This is the same time Jenny leaves the two of them on their own; two eighteen year old boys could get into a lot of trouble up in a penthouse by themselves, and by god, they  _ do.  _ But more importantly, they get into a relationship. A real one.

In the end, he might call it an overtly cruel act of fate that he never ends up leaving Akira Fudo’s side, but for now he is content to live in their high-rise and let be. Ryo makes videos full time now, and Akira goes to track meets daily. They’re both hoping to be picked up by someone big. They’re an odd couple, he with his shock of blond hair and dazzling blue eyes, Akira towering over him and all their friends. He’s always been absurdly tall--was taller than him at age five, and shot up like a rocket soon after--with an appetite to boost. 

Their friends consist of the girl who runs the combini down the street, Hina Akari, her girlfriend Niko Ren, and Reo Yuma, who---he’s a friend. They’re an okay group, tight-knit and all, but them being all from Akira’s track team, Ryo feels a bit stuck out like a sore thumb. He prefers to spend time with his boyfriend on the couch while Akira eats his fifth meal of the day, or watching stupid “sci”-fi movies (he quotes _Mars Attacks!_ As his favorite movie, to this day). If not easily evidenced enough by his Youtube channel, Ryo Asuka likes science.

Ryo Asuka likes science, and Ryo Asuka  _ loves  _ Akira Fudo. The way he wakes up sleepily and falls asleep loudly, his crooked one-sided smiles, his complete lack of pretenses. Akira wears his heart on his sleeve and his emotions plain as day, and Ryo never feels afraid around him, never afraid to feel whatever he needs to feel or be whoever he needs to be. Ryo has never felt afraid around Akira Fudo.

Ryo Asuka is a perfectly normal, perfectly human, perfectly in love 20 year old, and he's perfectly happy to stay that way forever, /thank you very much./

Then the nightmares start. Then the nightmares get worse. 

The nightmares start, and then they get worse, and then they increase in volume,  _ exponentially.  _ More nights than not, Ryo awakens at half-past-three, drenched head to toe in sweat. He never remembers what he dreams about, just that they’re jarring and awful, and he needs to get out of the apartment when he has them.  _ I’m fine,  _ he dismisses to Akira always, pushing past him, down the elevator, into the cool night air. For the first few weeks, he’s okay with breathing in the cool, frosty winter chill until his soothed. Then, it stops being enough.

He turns to food; he sprints to Hina’s store (not actually hers, but she works late shifts) and buys as much as he can carry. “This for Akira?” She laughs as she scans it. He just nods. Stuffing his face full seems to quell some urge in him, though Akira raises eyebrows at the piles and piles of leftovers on the table when he wakes up. 

Then, food stops being enough, and he starts clubbing.

Alcohol and party drugs make his head pound, but they give him clarity, too. They give him a break from the nightmare noises, the scattered visions, the bright lights and blazing fires and nuclear war that blares behind the whites of his eyes. He can drown himself in something not himself, get lost dancing and drinking and forgetting. He’d like to bring Akira to a place like this one day, he thinks. It might very well change his life. 

Human bodies are  _ fragile.  _ They can hurt themselves so very badly, this he knows, and he is only human, after all. But this is fine, he tells himself. Everything will be fine. In the morning he will wake up next to his boyfriend who will go to track practice while he films his videos, and with the exception of his hangover, it never will have happened at all.

Akira knows, though. Akira always knows. “This is a problem” _ ,  _ Akira tells him one morning.He filmed him with his own camcorder last night, the dirty bastard, hanging off him in some unholy high-drunk combination. 

_ IIIiiiii,  _ Ryo is slurring on the camera,  _ ‘m Sat’n, did you….know that? Ya-hmmm….begged God har’nuff for ‘nother chance and heeee…...said ‘ould be with _ _ you-- _ _ ’s my thir’ life, Akirayour….second, neither ‘fus kno-- _

“Oh my god.” He snaps, reaching for the tape. 

Akira darts out of his way. “Satan in your third life, huh?” He laughs. “I could put this on your channel. Tell the whole world my best friend’s some sort of... _ devil-man.” _

“You’re an ass. Who would  _ do  _ something like that?” This time Ryo manages; though Akira is significantly taller than him, he’s nimble, and he jumps for it, holding his precious camera to his chest. “I was wasted out of my damn mind, Akira.” He mumbles, throwing food into a duffel bag; Akira would go through his track meets on chips and soda alone, if Ryo let him. He tosses the bag to Akira with maybe a bit too much aggression. “They’re just nightmares and delusions. It’s not a problem.”

It’s three weeks later when he gets another one and wakes up in an alley five blocks from his house. There’s a knife laying haphazardly by his clenched fingers. There’s a raccoon on the ground in front of him, dead. His hands are covered in its blood.

_ Okay. Maybe this is a problem.  _

  
  
  



	2. ryo asuka: present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> //  
> Akira, the empathetic nosy sap, gets curious.  
> //  
> (it doesn't go as planned.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one took so long!!! I had a storyboard idea for this chapter, and it TOOK OFF IN ITS OWN DIRECTION. sometimes things like that happen; chapters or pieces take on their own lives when you write them. i let one sentence guide me to the next, let the words take me where they want to go. we broke script a little, so it took a little longer.
> 
> Still: action, suspense, and tension await you!! Thank you all SO MUCH for your support on this so far, I am so so so hyped to continue it!
> 
> [TW's for this chapter include drugs, alcohol, overstimulation, drunkenness, blood, death (of monsters(?)), implied nudity, and throwing up.]
> 
> [we have chapter titles now! these are INCREDIBLY (like, 100%) inspired by the black butler manga chapter titles. how do they keep coming up with adjectives???? it astounds me.]  
> [tags have now been updated!! also, ive bumped the rating up, just to be safe. This is a devilman fic with canon-compliant content, and at this point I don't think T is entirely safe. Sorry, everyone!]

By the time he returns to the flat, Ryo Asuka is  _ shaking.  _

Akira is there to greet him, because of course he is. Ryo is always to bed much later and awake much earlier than his boyfriend, and Akira sleeps like a log, so he was praying he wouldn’t be. But no, there he is, eyebrows furrowed in concern, eyes big and wet, hands reaching out for Ryo’s shaking ones, his voice breaking on a whimper. 

“Ryo-chan?” He says, softly. “You’re hurt...who hurt you?”

This is the part where Akira starts crying; Ryo knows it well. “That’s the funny thing.” Ryo mumbles, staring at his shoes, only the thing is, it’s not funny at all. Ryo left the dead raccoon there; he didn’t know what the Hell else he was supposed to do. “Nobody hurt me. I--”

He did take the bloodied knife with him, though. He had no idea where he got it. It wasn’t from their kitchen, it was much too bulky for that. “I hurt something else. A--an animal.” The thought buries deep inside him like a knife.

Akira sucks in a breath through his teeth. “You didn’t--”

“Yes.” Ryo nods, grimly. “Yes, I killed it.”

“You--you  _ murdered  _ in your sleep?” Akira takes a shaky breath, gripping Ryo’s bloodstained wrists further. 

“I wasn’t—sure if I was asleep.” Ryo muses. “Just...entranced, maybe?”

“They’re getting worse!” Akira babbles. “Your nightmares--they must be getting worse, you need to do something about this!”

“I’m fine.” Ryo finally lashes out, drawing his bloodstained hands back and holding them close to his body. That night he scrubs his hands raw in the sink for half an hour until the blood is gone, wipes his sorrows off on the versace towels, and shoves it all under the bed he falls fast,  _ fast  _ asleep on.

Akira, the empathetic nosy sap, gets curious. He needs to know. “Ryo’s been having nightmares lately.” He says to Hina the next time he goes to the combini for his regular late night all-you-can-eat buffet, though he doesn’t elaborate on this much further. “They’re really bad.” He mumbles, eyebrows furrowed. He’s sad--he’s very sad. But Akira Fudo has never cried for himself, and nobody seems to be as pressed about this as he is. Still, he once again doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t tell Hina about the urges or the late night walks or the murders.

“You should try dream therapy!” She chirps, cheerful as ever. “It helped me when I was having all those dreams about being decapitated!”

Akira stares. 

“Those what?”

“Yeah, it was weird.” Hina shrugs. “My dream therapist said it meant my head and my body weren’t in balance. That I wasn’t thinking rationally enough. It helped….I think.” Her face screwed up. “If anything, it made me feel less  _ weird  _ about the whole thing. If Ryo’s having nightmares, maybe he can help!”

Akira goes by himself. He tells Ryo to go, but he won’t budge. He claims he hasn’t had one since the night he killed that animal, but Akira doesn’t believe him. Still, Akira signs all the paperwork and sits outside the office with jittery legs until the therapist calls him in, and then they proceed to have the most awkward, stinted conversation of Akira Fudo’s life. 

“I’ve been having dreams about murdering people.”

“I see.” Says the dream therapist, raising an eyebrow. “Have you been hostile or aggressive in your waking hours?”

Akira considers that. Has he? Or, in other words, has Ryo? He’s been emotionally stinted, distant, overtly stoic; but that’s just how he is all the time. Akira shakes his head.

“Well.” The therapist says with an air of professionalism, studying a notebook Akira was 90% positive had nothing written in it. “Most likely signifying an end to a major relationship in your life, or a return of an old enemy. Possibly both at the same time. Are you in a romantic relationship?”

Akira’s throat goes dry. “No.”

“Well then.” He laughs sarcastically. “Make sure you pray to stay away from your enemies. They’re as old as time itself.”

  
  


It’s not enough for Akira, who wakes more nights than not alone these days. Ryo hasn’t come home with blood on his hands, but he does come home shaken, and Akira has to wonder if there is a sink somewhere in public getting an overt amount of usage. One night, Akira vows, he will follow his boyfriend.

So he does. Ryo wakes, checks to see if Akira is asleep. He’s not, but he knows how to fake it. Akira feels terrible, lying about anything, but for this, he can’t help the churning, terrible feeling inside that something is so wrong. And besides, he sleeps enough like a log to be able to fake; so when Ryo checks if he is sleeping he plays as good as dead, and then slips out the back door, following his entranced boyfriend down the stairs.

Akira has never been the inconspicuous sort, but he manages alright, following a few steps behind Ryo, staying to corners and dark shadows. Even if he was making a racket, though, Akira doesn’t think Ryo would’ve noticed. He seems  _ entranced,  _ skidding along the alleyway, walking lead with his shoulders high, like he’s on camera, instead of hunched over. Akira follows from dark passageway to dark passageway, past the smell of rotting garbage and animal carcasses, until finally he stops outside a building with blaring lights and intense music pouring from the windows, and to Akira’s horror, he enters. “ _ Ryo--!” _ He shouts, trying to stop his friend. Loud music, bright lights--was this a party? Ryo  _ hated  _ parties. Why was he walking into one, headstrong, now? 

Akira does the only thing he can do and follows.

He loses Ryo as soon as he’s through the door, no doubt in the seconds he spent debating his decision outside. He holds a hand over his eyes to shield out some of the blinding light. He’s still in his  _ pajamas,  _ and so is Ryo, they’re nowhere in a place to party. He listens as hard as he can to try and hear Ryo, or something that will lead him to him, but the blare of music in his ears drowns everything else out. 

“Hiya!” A girl in little more than her bra chirps, followed immediately by a snicker. “Nice getup.”

“I--I’m looking for my friend? He just walked in, blonde? Um--”

He doesn’t get any farther before she’s ripped open a bag and started pouring it into his hands with a giggle. “Uh.” He says, staring at it for a moment. It takes him far many more seconds than it should for him to realize it’s coke, and he jumps, looking up in alarm. She’s already gone, though, and he wipes his hands against each other furiously, brushing the stuff of his clothes.  _ What if  _ _ Ryo _ _ gets some?  _ He thinks, horrified. He’s come home drunk before. Is this where he’s been off to? 

“What is this place?” Akria asks nervously when he scopes out a bartender, who laughs at him nervously.

“Little too much to drink, buddy?” The man slides him a glass, pointing two fingers at it. “Water. Drink up.”

“None.” He purses his lips and shakes his head, though he takes the water graciously anyway. It burns on the way down. “I’m looking for my friend. I can’t find him anywh--”

It happens in slow motion. The alcohol in the bartender’s tumbler sloshes. There’s a soft, very soft, shattering noise from behind him. A window breaking. The shattering noise grows, then erupts. Akira barely has time to cover his eyes in horror, and he feels a piece of glass gash his arm, hard. 

“Something broke the window!” A voice screams over the music, something Akira had already inferred. “What  _ is  _ that thing?” 

Akira tries to get a visual, but it’s all a blur. The colors and movements sway in front of his eyes, and he stumbles back, gripping the counter for dear life. He turns around and  _ gapes  _ at the bartender, pointing at his glass. The man raises a shoulder, nonchalant. Akira is ready to throttle him then and there, but then, something slams into him, knocking all the wind out of his chest in an instant.

He’s pinned between a wall and the floor, and he turns, heaving the alcohol in his stomach onto the floor. It’s a pang of clarity, one that makes him want to curl up and sleep, but he knows he can’t do that, perhaps inches away from death. Something has him pinned, something big and scary and vicious that wants to-- _ eat  _ him, or something, and he doesn’t know what it is, and maybe he’ll never get the chance to find out, until suddenly, he is doused in blood.

He notices a few things right away as he’s spitting it out, rubbing it out of his eyes.

One: the pressure on his chest, the snarling in his ear--they’re gone. He’s safe. The thing has been killed.

Two: The blood makes a gentle arc across his clothes and catches off the gleam of something. Three: The  _ thing  _ in question is a giant sword. Silver with a gold hilt, one side of it perfectly coated in the sheen of blood from a perfect slice.

Fo--

“Go! GO!” It’s the shouting of the person holding the sword. Akira ducks and runs. He doesn’t know who the stranger is. It’s not a voice he recognizes, and he’s too scared to look straight up. But as he runs out of this horrific place, he turns over his shoulder, and sees, that standing in a perfect ring of blood:

Four: The man holding the sword is Ryo Asuka.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading thusfar, guys! Comments are super appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you guys enjoy this concept so far at all! I'd really appreciate some comments if you do. More chapters coming soon!!!!


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